Religion Blog

SALT LAKE CITY — William J. Hopkins already knew a bit about genealogy work when he arrived at
Utah State Prison in 1994. His interest had been sparked in his teens by an aunt who is a family
historian.

Hopkins, 40, now spends two to three hours a day working on family history projects — his own
and that of others — at the Family History Center at the prison’s Wasatch unit. He is an arbitrator
— someone who reviews duplicate data and then enters one copy into a database. Hopkins also tutors
fellow inmates on how to research their families.

He has traced his family line back to Myles Standish, his 11th great-grandfather who came to
America on the Mayflower as a military adviser to the Puritans and then went on to help settle
Massachusetts. Hopkins also has traced his ancestors’ trek west as part of the Mormon migrations to
the Utah territory between 1847 and 1850.

“You understand the hardships they went through,” he said, “and get to feel for them.”

The Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opened the first Family
History Center at Utah State Prison more than 20 years ago. Today, there are four centers at the
prison’s various units and one at the Central Utah Correctional Facility.

Inmates who volunteered at Utah State Prison centers last year indexed more than 2 million
records, said Wayne Parker, director of LDS Correctional Services for Salt Lake and Summit
counties. They also put in about 50,000 hours of personal family research.

It’s transformative work, Parker said, which helps inmates get to know their own family
histories while also developing an understanding of others.

“Everybody desires to have an identity and know who they are,” he said. “It helps them to
connect and fortifies their own identities, gives them a place in the scheme of things.”

One example: Parker said an inmate who worked in the Family History Center at the Wasatch unit
set a goal of completing college after discovering through family research that his
great-grandmother had received a degree in the 1920s, a time when few women sought higher
education.

Several Mormon volunteers work with the inmates as part of the program, which made its debut
last year.

When the indexing is completed, the records go online and become publicly available.

Cache County Deputy Sheriff Chris Toone called the program a success. About half the jail
population, or 150 people, is eligible to participate in work programs, and Toone said 23 inmates
had voluntarily enrolled in the genealogy class in March. Enrollment numbers stay fairly
consistent, which, he said, indicates the inmates like the program.

They work on computers that connect only to the LDS Church’s family-history research databases
or dedicated, stand-alone servers.